Where’s the OUTRAGE? A federal appeals court has taken the outrageous step of requiring that Ohio voters actually go to THEIR PROPER POLLING LOCATION to cast a vote in the upcoming election. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that the same thing was required in NAZI GERMANY.

The ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals supports an order issued by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. Democrats contend the Republican official’s rules are too restrictive and allege they are intended to suppress the vote.

Requiring people to go to their proper polling station is “suppressing the vote”? Suppressing the fraudulent vote, perhaps, but hardly an inconvenience for legal voters. It’s almost as if the Democrats want to make it easier for someone to vote two or twenty-seven times.

The state’s Democrats had filed a lawsuit challenging Blackwell’s directive instructing county elections boards not to give ballots to voters who come to the wrong precinct and to send them to the correct polling place on Election Day.

Blackwell has said allowing voters to cast a ballot wherever they show up, even if they’re not registered to vote there, is a recipe for Election Day chaos.

Chaos? Well, who would benefit from election day chaos? Not the person with the most votes.

Supporters of the provisional ballot measure contend that requiring people to vote at the proper location discriminates against “the poor and minorities” because they tend to move more.

What a C-R-O-C-K.

If they move more often (which is almost certainly the case, generally speaking) they should also update their voter registration more often. Do they change their mailing address when they move? Their phone number? Why?

Because if they don’t, they don’t get things that are important to them.

Same thing with voter registration. If voting is important enough to them, they will have changed their address and been listed in the correct precinct. If they haven’t taken the time to alter their registration, they’ll have to take the time to travel to their correct polling station. Simple enough.

This election isn’t a big surprise. If someone thinks its important enough to vote, it’s their responsibility to take the time to make sure they can do so properly. Why is it the election board’s responsibility to clean up the mess that irresponsible voters make?

“To avoid any confusion, we are not going to appeal this ruling,” David Sullivan, voter protection coordinator for the Ohio Democratic Party, said in a statement. “That way we can ensure that voters and election officials understand that voters must be in the proper polling place before casting a vote.”

The 6th Circuit did rule that the Democrats had a right to file the lawsuit.

Color me cynical, but this tells me that Democrats either know they cannot win the appeal or that they will not win Ohio regardless. My guess is that they are preparing a post-election legal challenge to the Ohio results, with this latest ruling part of their ammunition for trying to shoot down what I expect to be Bush’s win in the state.

And it’s not just Ohio.

Similar court battles are under way in other states. In Florida, a federal judge ruled Thursday that the state must reject provisional ballots if they are cast in the wrong precinct.

In Michigan, a federal judge said those ballots must be counted if cast by voters at the wrong precinct but in the right city, township or village. That decision also has been appealed to the 6th Circuit, but the appellate court has yet to issue a ruling in that case.

In Missouri and Colorado, judges have ruled that votes in the wrong place don’t have to be counted.

I would expect the 6th Circuit to rule the same in Michigan, based upon the explanation given for the Ohio ruling. I also expect the Democrats to cry ‘foul’ over this decision when it comes.

On a personal note, I myself was directed to vote at my proper polling station once upon a time when I lived in Colorado. I had moved recently, and had not thought to change my registration. It seems to me that it must have been the 1990 elections. I had voted for the first time in 1988, and probably didn’t vote in 1989, so being young and clueless it had never occurred to me to change my registration when we moved that summer or fall. I wasn’t thrilled about turning around and heading to my previous station, but I did it and I cast my vote. Then I updated my registration. Lesson learned.

You know, for all the talk I’ve heard from the Left over the past couple of years about the Republicans’ plans to cheat the election using electronic voting machines designed and built by companies owned by Republicans, the past two months have shown us a lot of fraudulent voter registrations and groundwork for post-election lawsuits and challenges. I might be biased (okay, I’m TOTALLY biased) but it seems to me that the Democrats have more than their fair share of these schemes going on.

I imagine you missed it, but Afghanistan held elections the other weekend. They were filled with charges of fraud and wrong-doing, but everything seems to be moving along according to plan.

Is it possible that Afghanistan is farther along the road to Jeffersonian Democracy than we thought?

UPDATE: Paul at Wizbang has this to say about the Dems’ decision not to appeal the decision:

Suddenly the party with thousands of lawyers decided to give it a pass. What happened to their concern for the voters? What about the minorities? Why give this up so easily?

Because they do not want to go to the Supreme Court in an obvious attempt to steal the election before it even starts. It would be a PR disaster that would cost them the election. People would see thru the scam and take it out on Kerry in the voting booth.

If they thought they had the moral high-ground (or could spin it so they did) they would be appealing the ruling and whining on CNN about how Republicans are trying to disenfranchise people. Instead, they tried to set it up so they could steal the election then skulked away when they got caught.